Authors: Willard Price
They might already be above the cabins and tents of the Lodge. He turned his flashlight on the great bag over his head. He desperately hoped they would see it. But be knew in his heart that the chances were a hundred to one against it. The warden and his rangers and guests did not make a practice of wandering around outside after nightfall when wild animals made a parade ground of the camp.
But he kept his light on the bag. Then he saw a glimmer below. That was light shining from cabin windows.
‘Shout.’ he said to Roger. They shouted loud enough to wake the dead. Their shouts were carried away on the wind. In ten seconds they were swept beyond the camp and over some of the wildest country of East Africa. There was now nothing but blackness below.
And blackness ahead. It loomed into the sky, shutting off the stars. Away at the top of this great tower of blackness was something white, like a white roof, or a white cloud in the night sky.
What could it be, this black tower with a white roof? Hal tried to reconstruct the map in his imagination. What was the country like straight west of Kitani?
Then it came to him. The mountain!
His heart skipped a beat. He tried to keep his voice calm. T’m afraid we’re in for a bad time. Kilimanjaro -straight ahead. We’re bound to smash into it.’
Roger peered at the black monster with the cap of white.
‘Can’t we go around it?’
‘No chance. You’re not in an aeroplane. No way to steer this thing.’
‘How about going over it?’
‘Nineteen thousand feet high. The highest mountain in all Africa. We might leap-frog over a six-thousand-foot peak. But even if we threw out every ounce of sand I don’t see how we could climb to nineteen thousand.’
‘Well, if we do strike it,’ said Roger, ‘perhaps we’ll get off with a few bruises. Then we can walk down the slope and find a village.’
Hal laughed bitterly. ‘Slope, the man says. What slope? Don’t you remember how this side of the mountain looks through your binoculars? A straight up-and-down cliff of solid rock. When we crash, don’t try to get out of the basket. There’ll be nothing to get out on. If-the balloon holds its gas, and if we aren’t knocked into the next world by the blow, we may stick there until we…’
‘Until we starve?’
‘Until the wind changes and blows us off.’
‘That’s not likely,’ Roger said. ‘You know this is a trade wind.’
‘Right - and it blows pretty steadily from east to west most of the year. Still, miracles do happen. Let’s hope for one.’
Hal had a scientific mind, but in the excitement of the moment he could hardly be expected to remember all the laws of nature. Roger beamed a flashlight ahead. The cliff could be plainly seen. But the Jules Verne was not approaching it at forty miles an hour.
‘We’re slowing down,’ Roger said. ‘How could that be?’
Hal guessed the reason. ‘The cliff blocks the wind so perhaps we’ll strike without having the breath knocked out of us.’
But they did not strike. Instead, the cliff began to slide down before their eyes. Or so it seemed. It took a moment to realize that it was hot the cliff that was dropping but the balloon that was going up. Why should it suddenly start to climb?
Hal looked at the altimeter. Five hundred feet, a thousand, fifteen hundred, two thousand. It made the head a bit dizzy. Five thousand, ten thousand, fifteen thousand.
‘We’re caught in a thermal,’ Hal said.
‘Just what is a thermal?’
‘Rising body of hot air.’
‘But why should there be hot air here?’
‘The cliff. It has stored up the sun’s heat. The hot rock warms the air. Hot air rises, so up we go with it.’
‘Not a bad miracle,’ said Roger gratefully.
So the wind had not died down after all. Striking the rock, it was forced to go somewhere. A good part of it decided to go up, helped by the heat of the precipice.
‘I only hope it continues,’ Hal said.
‘Why shouldn’t it?’
‘We’re getting up into colder air. It’s like going from the equator to the arctic. Half an hour ago, tropical jungle. And now look.’
The heated rock had given way to ice and snow. In the arms of the dying thermal the balloon struggled over a glacier that never died. The Jules Verne began to sink.
‘Out with some sand,’ cried Hal. ‘If we get stranded here we’ll freeze to death.’
The shower of sandbags did not help much. The basket began to drag over the snowbanks. Fresh snow was falling and the wind was biting cold.
Roger tried to cheer himself and his brother by saying, ‘Well, we can build an igloo and live up here until help comes.’ He shivered. His finger-tips were already freezing and he was suffering from lack of oxygen.
The basket stumbled and stopped. A gust of wind carried it a little farther, then it stopped again. Out with more sand. Struggling painfully, like a man limping, the basket hobbled over the snowbanks - then suddenly took heart and rose a few feet. The air seemed warmer than before. Below, dimly seen through the snow-storm, was no snow or ice, but a large black hole. Far down in it was the gleam of fire.
Some tens of thousands of years ago Kilimanjaro had been an active volcano. Recently new signs of activity had been reported. There was no spouting of lava and no disappearance of snow and ice, but one of the many craters had begun to steam.
It was just enough to save the Jules Verne. It rose gently to some fifty or sixty feet and presently it was across the top.
The boys breathed again. ‘I’ll bet it’s the first time anybody ever climbed that mountain in a basket,’ Roger said.
The balloon began to fall.
Roger noticed it first. ‘Seems to me as if everything’s dropping out from under us.’
Hal looked at the altimeter. It read eighteen thousand feet. Even as he kept his light on it, it slid down to seventeen, Sixteen, fifteen thousand.
‘It was bound to happen,’ Hal said. ‘The hot thermal that carried us up got chilled by the glaciers and snowbanks and snow-storm while it was passing over the mountain-top. Now it’s cold air, and of course cold air falls.’
This side of the mountain was not a rock precipice. It was a slope, and dirt, not rock, so it had not stored up the heat of the sun. On the contrary, it was cooled to below freezing by the air descending from the icy crown.
The single jet of hot air rising from the only active crater that had lifted the balloon for a few moments was nothing compared with the chill produced by the twenty square miles of arctic ice crowning the head of Kilimanjaro.
Now the cold down-draught had brought them to eleven thousand on the altimeter. But that was still two miles high.
Roger’s teeth chattered with cold. ‘We can’t go down too fast for me,’ he said, between chatters.
The remark made Hal wake up to a new danger. ‘We could go down too fast,’ he said.
‘The faster the better,’ Roger objected.
‘No. Trouble with a balloon is, when it’s going it tends to keep going. It’s hard to stop it. You noticed when we threw out sandbags it was very slow to rise. Same way when it’s falling - it doesn’t change its mind quickly no matter what you do. It’s quite liable to crash into the ground with such a jolt that we’ll both be killed. Let’s chuck out some more sand.’ S§|j
Out went more of the precious sandbags. It was no use. The wind rushing down the mountainside carried the balloon swiftly towards complete disaster.
‘The trail rope,’ Roger exclaimed. ‘Wouldn’t that slow us down?’
‘Why didn’t I think of that?’ Hal said.
He threw out the trail rope. It was a little more than a hundred feet long. One end of it was fastened to the basket - the other end trailed through the bushes and rocks of the slope.
That was why it was called a trail rope. Its drag over rough ground helped to slow the dangerous rush of the balloon.
At least, that was the idea. But this time the down-coming wind was so strong that the delaying action of the trail rope was slight. They were still going down the slope at the speed of a runaway locomotive.
Would they crash into trees below? Or be ground up on rocks? Hal directed his electric torch downwards. At first it showed him nothing but more slope.
Then he could see the bottom of the slope where the ground levelled off. ‘Fine!’ he said. ‘Nice soft grass. We won’t have too bad a landing after all.’
Roger’s sharp eyes saw that the ‘nice soft grass’ was anything but. As they came closer he could see a thousand daggers waiting to receive them. It was as if the plain was covered with soldiers, each holding his sword erect, and two boys were about to be punctured by the sharp points.
Every leaf stood stiff and straight, about man-high, a good six feet. These sword-like leaves, so pleasantly green that at a distance the whole field had looked like a green meadow, ended in a murderous black needle four or five inches long.
‘Sandbags!’ Hal yelled. Out they went, but the momentum of the falling balloon still carried it straight down to the field of swords.
‘Up into the rigging!’ commanded Hal. Like monkeys, or sailors, they went hand over hand up the ropes that suspended the basket.
There was a ripping and tearing sound as the long swords pierced the bottom of the basket and rose so high that the boys had to pull up their legs to avoid the great black needles.
Did they dare come down? Or must they stay up here until morning when the owner of the plantation might possibly come by and rescue them?
The basket was stuck as a man might be stuck fast if he sat down on a porcupine.
‘Why does anybody raise such stuff?’ Roger demanded angrily. ‘What is it anyhow?’
‘Sisal,’ Hal said.
‘And what’s sisal?’
‘Just the chief export of this country. Looks like cactus. It’s a cousin of the century plant.’
‘Century plant. That’s the one that blooms at the end of a century and then dies.’
‘People used to think so. It really doesn’t last that long. Only about ten years, then it sends up a tall flower-stalk and blooms and promptly gives up the ghost. Sisal does the same thing.’
He swept the field with his torch. From some of the plants tall spires rose, just one to a plant, up to a height of about twenty feet where the slender stalk was crowned by a great white flower.
‘What’s it good for, this sisal?’
‘Those leaves contain fibres as stiff as wires. The leaves are cut off and taken to a mill where they scrape away the pulp and leave just the fibres. Then they take the fibres and twist them together to make twine and cord and rope and even great cables strong enough to hold an ocean liner.’
i ‘We’re in a pretty mess now,’ Roger said. ‘How do we get loose from those spikes?’
‘Let’s rock the boat. Both together, from side to side, and we may pull her loose.’
They rocked until they were dizzy. The basket did not budge one inch.
‘I think I know what’s the trouble,’ Hal said. ‘Everyone of those leaves has prickles all along the edge, barbed like fish-hooks. We can’t move until we get rid of those fish-hooks. I’ll see what I can do.’
He eased himself down among the swords. ‘Ouch!’ he exploded, as the black needles found tender parts of his anatomy. They seemed as sharp as razors. If he escaped the points he scraped his hands on the fish-hooks. He drew his bush-knife and began slashing off the barbs that edged each leaf right down to the floor of the basket.
There was not room for two to work in the basket already populated by several dozen of the enemy, so Roger stayed on watch above. Presently he cried, ‘Something funny is happening. The balloon - look!’
Hal stood up and was startled to see that the balloon was leaning far over, away from the mountain. That brought it nearer the ground and if it came a little lower the swords would puncture its skin, the gas would all escape, and the disaster would be complete.
The troublemaker was the wind. It had been coming down the mountainside. Now that the level ground was reached the wind, of course, stopped going down and continued its way west, dragging the great bag with it so that it lay almost on its side nearly within reach of the swords.
Hal worked feverishly. It would be better if he could cut straight through the swords at floor level. He tried it but found it impossible - the ‘wires’ in the leaf resisted his blade and he did not have room to swing his knife.
He went back to fish-hooks. As he trimmed them off a gummy, soapy juice oozed from the cut places and got on his hands. Now if he had some water he could wash his hands. Africans near the sisal plantations used this ancient soap. Though ancient, it was really more modern than soap - it was nature’s own detergent.
Without water, it was just a sticky mess and he got pretty well plastered by it before his trimming job was completed.
‘That ought to do it,’ he shouted to the monkey in the rigging. ‘How’s the bag doing?’
‘Pulling hard,’ Roger said. ‘If there was just some way we could ease up on the weight for a minute she might pull free.’
Hal thought fast. He weighed a good one hundred and ninety pounds. If he could just weigh nothing for a second, the balloon would lift.
‘I’m getting out,’ he said.
‘Are you crazy?’
Hal was already clambering out of the basket He was immediately stabbed in several places by the porcupine quills of the sisal, but he managed to wriggle down among the savage swords and scraping fish-hooks and got his feet on solid ground.
He still held on to the edge of the basket but put no weight on it.
At once he noticed a change. The hydrogen was now able to tear the basket free from the clutch of the sisal. Hal, still hanging on, ran alongside as the basket was dragged over the tops of the plants. The bag rose to a vertical position and the magic carpet began to leave the ground. Hal pulled himself up, and in. His weight caused a momentary sag, then as the last grasping finger-nails of sisal lost their grip the Jules Verne rose, free and happy.
‘Hal, are you there?’ Roger shouted anxiously. ‘I’m aboard,’ Hal said.
Roger was about to leap down into the basket. ‘Don’t jump,’ Hal warned. ‘You might go right through. The floor has been pretty badly riddled by those spines.’ Roger slid gently down into the basket The torn weave beneath his feet felt as if it might let him through at any moment and drop him on the sisal swords.